


Jamais Vu

by ZeroMonster



Category: DCU
Genre: Amnesia, Comic Injury, Dick Grayson is Ric Grayson, Gen, I apologize to the medical community at large, M/M, Seizures, Traumatic Brain Injury, ignoring the flash part, jaydick-flashfic: amnesty, jaydick-flashfic: fake dating or marriage of convenience, nothing graphic, slightly more realistic than current comics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-30 20:01:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19034641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZeroMonster/pseuds/ZeroMonster
Summary: Rick Grayson does not come crawling back (but he does run) to Barbara when he discovers someone is trying to kill Nightwing, memories or not. Barbara comes up with a plan to make Ric appear less vulnerable. Jason Todd is too good at taking care of people for his own good.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Often described as the opposite of déjà vu, jamais vu involves a sense of eeriness and the observer's impression of seeing the situation for the first time, despite rationally knowing that he or she has been in the situation before.  
> Beta'ed by the talented Kdin.

 

> “How much can you change and get away with it, before you turn into someone else, before it's some kind of murder?” - Richard Siken, War of the Foxes.

 

 

He doesn't remember the bullet.

 

They tell him it's normal but he feels like he really should be more troubled by waking up in a hospital after a life threatening injury.

 

(Threatening - threat..ening - thra..ing)

 

He doesn’t recall the first time he woke up but they tell him this is the first time Bruce Wayne's come to see him.

 

He comes in all, _Hey, chum_. Like that means something to him and leaves after the word amnesia is thrown around one too many times.

 

Richard John Grayson is alive. Halle-fucking-lujah.

 

 

 

“Can you tell me where you are?” asks a doctor. A different one, not a surgeon.

 

“I...Cave…Tent.” His speech is slurred, but that’s not it, he shakes his head, frustrated with himself. “Hos-pital.”

 

“A hospital. correct. Let’s begin, can you tell me what two plus one is?”

 

“...three, three.”

 

“Can you point to your left shoulder?”

 

He does, or thinks he does.

 

“Can you point to your right eye?”

 

He does, he’s sure he does.

 

“Can you point to _my_ right eye?”

 

He stops. He tries but - “Can’t...no.”

 

“Ok, that’s alright.”

 

It’s not alright, he knows it’s not only alarming that he’s experiencing this kind of disorientation... it’s dangerous.  

 

“Can you wiggle your index finger?” The doctor puts his hand on the table demonstrating that he should do the same. He does and goes to touch his index finger with his other hand. “Without touching it,” the doctor explains.

 

He manages. Barely.

 

 

 

Time stops existing. At one point he’s learning to walk again. This strikes him as wrong because he’s sure that before _walking_ , there should be _flying_.

 

“Bruce shouldn’t have sealed you away like this in his grief.”

 

He’s surprised to find that he’s no longer alone in PT. He doesn’t know what day is it. He looks around for his therapist but there’s only the redhead woman.

 

“Everyone deserved to see in person that you were alive, you have no idea how integral you are to so many,” she continues. “And their faces could have triggered some kind of memory, I don’t know. I did never took to medicine.” She sounds angry at herself for this. He just wants to be alone.

 

 

 

After walking apparently, comes jogging. It’s still wrong, he has pushed himself to remember as far in the past as he can and he’s certain… he’s certain... his parents…

 

His coordination is shot to hell, pun very much fucking intended. He doesn’t know a lot of things about himself but this -  he knows movement has never been this hard for him. It terrifies him.

 

Barbara doesn’t help. She talks to him about, well, himself. She paints a picture of a man he doesn’t recognise: strong, smart, compassionate, funny, caring and a hundred more adjectives.

 

More and more, it feels like he’s doing a really bad impersonation of himself.

 

 

 

“Nightwing,” Barbara says, testing, staring at him with an unnerving intensity. He looks blankly back at her. She looks crushed.

 

She explains. He laughs in her face. For a moment he thinks she’s going to slap him. He doesn’t care to know how much time has passed.

 

 

 

He can think clearly now, mostly. But who fucking cares, his parents are dead.

 

Batman and Robin brought the murderer to justice. Great. Where does that leave _him_?

  


 

A bullet travels through the brain faster than the speed at which tissues tear. This means that it's actually pushing tissues out of the way, stretching them beyond their breaking points. When high velocity bullets travel at thousands of feet per second, they exit the body before the tissues have a chance to rip.

 

(Barbara told him this, she seemed to think it might help).

 

In the bullet's wake, a long temporary cavity is left.

 

In that space should be the memories of his new family. Instead, his whole being balks at so much as the idea, grief and rage drowning him. It feels like regressing, but it also feels familiar so he clings to it. Trying to claw his way out feels like too much work.

 

 At the end of it he walks away.

 

 

 

Rely on one thing too long and when it disappears and you have nothing… well, that’s just bad planning.

 

Trained by Batman Dick Grayson may have been, but he obviously didn't plan for this. So he makes do.

 

The woman who lives in the apartment he just broke into is either loaded or has a rich lover. He steals her moisturizer and decides to take a shower, he has to sit down on the tile when he gets tired but the water never turns cold.

 

He eats before he forgets and laments that he can never remember that he hates yellow cheese. He rinses his mouth before leaving for the night.

 

He ends up in the first bar he finds. He’s not stupid, he can’t get better fast enough, so he doesn’t drink. But there’s something about all the people drawn to the heat of the interior, the noise, the laughs, a barman even has a parrot on his shoulder. It’s not an elephant but it’ll make do.

 


	2. Everybody is always a stranger

“So, correct me if i’m wrong,” Bea says, leaning over the bar counter. “But no neurologist worth a damn would ever release a TBI patient without a family member to be with them twenty four-seven”.

 

“You a doctor now, B?” He downs the water she served him. “Maybe I didn't wait until she could make that call.”

 

There’s a pause and then Bea’s expression turns comically incredulous. “You ran away from the hospital?”

 

He shrugs.

 

“You’re crazy,” she says.

 

“You like it.” He grins.

 

“No, I - don’t look at me like that!” She laughs and lightly punches him in the arm.

 

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” says a voice over at the end of the bar.

 

“Overindulging in vodka would do that to you, Jack,” Bea calls. Ric snorts.

 

“Oh yeah, the vodka, sure,” says Jack.

 

“You’re just jealous,” he says, grinning.

 

“Of what? Of all the chilli you’ve eaten in this bar trying to woo Bea? Yeah, no. Don’t take it personally love but you’re a shit cook,” he says the last bit to Bea.

 

“He might have a point,” Bea says as she pulls a face. “Please tell me you eat other things different from what I make.”

 

“I’m sure I must have at some point,” he says in a purposefully over-innocent voice and scratches his head close to the jagged scar. Bea rolls her eyes.

 

“You can only use the amnesia card so many times to get out of stuff,” she says. He smiles brightly at her.

 

 

 

In a sense, he loves this untethered state because of the freedom it brings. He's free to do _anything_ he wants.

 

He dodges another punch aimed at his face, wipes the blood running down his nose. Lucky hit. Honestly _._

 

His body positively _sings_ with all the adrenaline racing in his blood, the way his fists collides against his opponent's face makes him feel alive.

 

(So he's fucked up, noted. He learns new things about himself everyday).

 

He remembers how his body felt out of control for _months_ after he woke up and he lunges. It's over in seconds.

 

“That was good, kid, beautiful. Get down from there, I’m talking to you,” Sal, the manager of the fighting ring, says. “You get fifty more than last time, that okay with you?”

 

He shrugs with one shoulder, he was doing this for the thrill but the taxi didn’t leave that much, really, so he wasn’t going to say no to a little more money.

 

He follows Sal to the back and has to shake his head against a wave of dizziness, frowning. He isn’t even out of breath but he lost several pounds of weight, most of it muscle mass, while he was in the hospital, maybe this is his body telling him he needs to eat an actual meal. Damn, Bea was right.

 

His sight blurs a little and when he brings his hands to up to rub his knuckles against his eyes his fingertips are tingling.

 

“You look pale.” He hears Sal said from afar, like an echo. “You look pale Ric, you okay?”

His muscles are stiff and he’s shaking. He bites his tongue on his way down.

 

It physically costs him something to wake up and even then he doesn’t open his eyes. The darkness he's under feels heavy though he can’t remember when he went to sleep. There’s someone near, he can feel them a few feet away but he doesn’t feel threatened and he’s too tired to finish most of his thoughts.

 

"I thought you were dead, you know.” The voice belongs to a man. “Bruce told nothing to anyone and fucked off to punish the man that tried to kill _you_ and nobody saw him for weeks. Not that _I_ wanted to see him.” Ric feels a pang in his chest softened with drowsiness, a reaction to the tone of the man’s voice. “And then he, Alfred and Barbara were the only ones that knew where you were. I guess this shitshow concerned only the first members of the family,” he says with an undercurrent of bitterness, then follows up with an eager tone: “Hey, you awake?"

 

He isn't. The darkness takes him again.

 

 

 

He doesn't remember the seizure, as one won’t with that kind of thing and at this point, he's used to blackouts

 

Still, after getting out of the clinic he needs to do something with his restless energy and for the first time he considers seeking out Barbara because he kind of wants to talk to someone but dismisses the idea before it can fully form. There’s nothing he could say to her, nothing she’d want to hear anyway.

 

So he follows some piece of advice that floats out of the deep of his mind and which he truly doubts was something his old self had said: _when there’s nothing to say, set something on fire_.

 

But then it came back to bite him in the ass.

 

"I forgot," Ric says to himself, "that they were fireproof."

 

As he'd set fire to Nightwing's weapons and costumes caché, one thing had occurred to him: that first costume had a hell of a neckline and his mother would have loved it.

 

It did _not_ occur to him that the materials they were made of could be resistant to fire.

 

Sitting down in front of a plasma tv in an architect's studio he thinks he should've seen this coming. Well, not _this_. _This_ is insane.

 

Who the hell would want to be Nightwing?

 

Apparently, uh, _everybody_.

 

On tv, three men and a woman wearing the Nightwing suits arrest a group of thieves and turn around to find themselves facing the wrath of… Robin? And… Red Robin? And… Purple Robin? The last one is a death ripper, he's mostly sure.

 

He turns the tv off and decides to leave them to it.

 

 

 

Goodbye fighting ring, hello casino. It's not even that he wants to be here, it's more that Bludhaven is overflowing with casinos, neon lights hurting his senses and his sensibilities, and he felt a little lost as to where to go. At least here there's enough noise to quiet his anxiety for a while.

 

He almost gets in a fight over stealing another player's ace under the sleeve before someone approaches him.

 

"This yours?" A man asks, skin a beautiful brown and hair charmingly curling around his eyes. Ric eyes the drink the man is holding out.

 

"No."

 

"Do you want it?"

 

"Smooth." He grins. "Thanks, but I don't drink."

 

The man nods, a little disappointed but he just takes a sip, holding Ric's gaze all the while. He recognizes it's his move now.

 

"Turist?" He asks.

 

"What gave it away?"

 

"The look of lack of despair and existential crisis. You almost glow with it."

 

"Thanks?"

 

He's attractive and interesting and he doesn't demand anything from him.

 

"I like your accent," he says. "I want to hear what it sounds like during sex."

 

There's a backroom in the building for these things because of course there is. They don't wait to get inside to start kissing, Ric buries his fingers in his hair and pushes him against the door. The lines of the male body feel familiar against him and he's almost more thrilled about finding a recognizable piece of himself than he is about the sex.

 

One of them pushes the door open and they pour inside. There's a mattress there but they do it on the floor.

 

Ric lets him go out first with a last kiss and he tries to smooth his shirt before stepping out.

 

"Dick?" Someone says behind him. He starts.

 

"Jesus, you scared the crap out of me," he says to Barbara. "How long have you been there?"

 

By the shocked look on her face as she follows - actually, he doesn't know what his name is -  the other man with her gaze, the answer is: enough.

 

"What," he says, smirking, something ugly stirring in his stomach. "Don't tell me you didn't know the paragon of vigilante justice enjoyed taking it up the ass."

 

"Don't be crude! It's not that! it's just - " and she looks sad. "You never told me. Or anyone, I don't think."

 

"Well," he says, feeling all emotions starting to flow out of him. “Feel free to fill anyone in or whatever. You know, if they really need to know."

 

"Dick," she says softly at his retreating back.

  


 

_What would Batman not do?_

 

That’s what Ric asks himself when it happens: an assassination attempt behind his favourite ramen place.

 

He just finished his shift and left the taxi at the garage for maintenance. He's thinking that he should call the police and hole up in that room above the church he saw the other night and _why is he walking towards the fucking men with the fucking guns?!_

 

 _Turn around!_ he yells at himself. "Hey!" He yells at the mercenaries.

 

A gun goes off and he somersaults over the man's head. Five minutes later he knows the whole thing was a mistake - thinking too much about it, should've let muscle memory take over - when he finds himself on his back.

 

Nothing to do about it. The sound of fire shots follow him to the roof. He wants to go back down for the victim but doesn't know how.

 

Someone lands on the alley bellow and the sound of bullets hitting brick turns into something sharper, metallic. Ric looks up at the night sky and then back to the superhero, who in true deus ex machina style has taken care of the mercs.

 

He lands softly down on the alley and watches as the silver suited figure helps the victim up and talks to him. The man rolls his eyes in despair at the word 'police'. Blüdheaven.

 

He's about to disappear in the shadows but the armoured woman turns around and he catches the red S on her chest. (Superman!)

 

"Are you okay?" She asks.

 

"Me?" Ric blinks.

 

He follows her gaze to a tear in his jacket, the edges wet with blood, he hadn't even felt it but now it hurts.

 

"It's a graze, I'm okay," he says, suppressing a wince.

 

"Do you have something to patch it up?" She asks. She tries to hide the firearms lying on the ground, pushing them out of his sight with her heels.

 

"Do you?" He challenges and narrows his eyes at whatever she's doing.

 

"I'm Steel." She smiles.

 

Steel guides him to a patch of illuminated alley and tends to his injury with the utmost care. When she's done they're left alone staring at one another -  the police long gone - and they blurt at the same time: "I thought you were out?" "Can you fly?"

 

He ignores her question and she doesn't push it. Hero worship or something else? He's annoyed because he hadn't planned disappointing anyone tonight but he does owe her so he quels it.

 

"Were we friends?" He asks.

 

"Colleagues," she answers.

 

"Really," he says, flat, looking at the alley as if he could find answers in the graffitti.

 

"Teammates," she corrects, sheepishly. "Your closest friends are being monitored and actively deterred from contacting you. I think Batman's facing a great scale mutiny at this point. I guess I should apologize for ignoring your wishes about not being contacted."

 

He shrugs, he's getting tired and summoning feelings stronger than frustration is difficult for him right now.

 

"Why are you here?" He asks.

 

"I… I guess I needed to see you. _You_ recruited me into the Titans, _you_ are the main reason I joined, I guess I'm… a little lost."

 

He represses the need to snap, _that's not me_. Instead he snorts."Wish I could help you, but have you ever heard of the blind leading the blind?"

 

She gives him a half smile.

 

 

 

At first he thinks it's another Natasha, another lost friend looking for someone that doesn't exist anymore but then... something's wrong: the shadows around him are menacing, whoever is following him wants to hurt him. Something catches the light of the moon, a wink in his periphery and he takes off running.

 

He runs until he's out of breath and for the first time is relieved when he finds Barbara.


End file.
